2006-05-24

This will be my last post for a good long while: I'm going on vacation! (One of the benefits of anonymous blogging is being able to say this and not risk home invasion and the likes)

So for roughly 3 weeks, I will not be posting to this blog. Or reading this blog. Or any blog, really. (I'm not going somewhere where I'm likely to have internet access, which is a bit of a shame with Fantasy Baseball and Oilers Playoffs calling on my internet needs)

So anybody who stumbles across this, here is your free time: have a little private discussion. This entry's comments section can be a little freestyle ranting in my absence. As Linda Richman would say:

I'm a little verklempt.

Talk amoungst yourselves.

Here, I'll give you a topic:

The New Democratic Party is neither new nor democratic nor a party. Discuss.

This was the last Oilers game I'll get to see this year regardless of the outcome (see the next post up for a sort-of explanation). They went out in typical Oilers style. And by typical Oilers style, I mean choking up a 4-0 lead in four minutes flat. No, seriously: O'Donnel scored at 7:15 in the third. Kunitz scored at 11:15. Brutal. Brutal. I'd just finished freaking out asian passerbys with the hooting and hollering out of my window, only to have to suddenly start eating crow.

I unfortunately was unable to make it down to Whyte Avenue for the game fun: company over in the afternoon and discovering I had to drive down to work to get the farewell letters I was taking with me really impacted my ability to get everything done in time. I hope the rioting was good. *Sniffle*

So Game 4, possibility of the sweep. To be honest, I don't like the Oilers' chances: they'll still be recovering from the flu. Anaheim will be very hungry. This will be an entire game like the 3rd period tonight. And that means a very large number of goals. (Hopefully Edmonton has 50%+1 of them!) This would also mean that Edmonton has clinched every series on home ice, despite being the road team every series. Not bad!

My comment on the thread apparently wasn't well received. Well that's discoura...hee hee... dammit, I thought I could keep a straight face. Hey, at least somebody's read enough of the blog to know that I know something about Edmonton's population that EPS and ETS don't (or else he just typed "black" into the search bar above the site, where that post is (was, this post is likely to supercede it) the first link. (Mind you, I didn't argue there was any "secret black subculture" on the busses...specifically, I argued that every black person in Edmonton knows each other, a fact which is merely demonstrated by getting on a bus. You can loiter next to the food court at Eaton's Centre and verify the same concept, but the McDonalds there has the shitty "McDonalds Lite" menu that doesn't include breakfast bagels or Big Xtras and the Game City there doesn't have the selection that's available at the one in Southgate)

Also well received, of course, was my observation that pansies in Europe riot over soccer. Soccer. (As always, the Simpsons says almost all can be said about the sport). I mean, those soccer riots are so vicious that some games have to be played in empty stadiums to keep the fans under control. Plawiuk argues:

Hence the soccer holliganism, after all unlike overweight baseball players soccer is actually a physical and violent sport.†

Oops, didn't I just post video of Barry Bonds getting nailed? Last month I showed video of bat-throwing and helmet-throwing incidents...and that's just at umpires! (Recall I also defended such vicious violence. Much like the 14 year old girl in a "too hot to touch" thong and a low-cut shirt complaining about a date-rape, these people had it coming) Also argued was that

Now you claim Europe and South America are metrosexuals, ahh wrong ooo boyo. They are macho cultures.

Er...yeah...

Men at Carnaval in Rio de Janerio: Sam Peckinpah impersonators, every last one of them!

† As for physical contact in soccer, when Lars Hirschfeld starts collecting yellow cards at the rate Dwayne Roloson has been Hextall-like accumulating minor penalties, I might pretend soccer has more physical contact than the other great boring sports of our time (basketball and golf).

Meanwhile, I'll be rioting it up on Whyte Ave tonight as soon as the game ends (assuming it ends in a win... an Oilers loss and I'll be back here blogging by 11pm). It's just like Plawiuk's favourite riot in the street, only all we do is hit idiots with bottles and launch fireworks at girls who write cheques their areolas can't cash. No little boys were killed, even though the 'Peg strikers got one month without the police being ordered to make arrests which we poor members of the hockey proletariat were not so fortunate with.

We're not out of the woods yet boys. And while Randy Carlyle is right that 1 goal per game isn't going to cut it for Anaheim this series, we're all forgetting that after so much effort the Oilers have only gotten 2 goals past Anaheim's hot goaltender in each game (both games ended 3-1 with an empty netter... the first two San Jose games both had a 2-1 score, in a weird creepy coincidence...Game 4 and Game 5 ended 6-3 in that series too... this is starting to concern me).

So come on Oilers: get your act together. Find a consistent weakness in this guy and spend all game tomorrow exploiting it: put a half dozen pucks past him if you get the urge. Otherwise a rejuvinated Quack Squad is going to be doing to us what we did to San Jose.

Namely, what it says about the person who puts the quote up as their dating profile opening line, or their website, or their email sig (do people still use those?), or at the top of their blog, or as the title of their blog post, or the line on the poster on the back of their bedroom door. Ready? Let's go:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

The person in question is a dreamer. They are also an idiot. Imagination doesn't get you physics degrees, believe me.

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.

This person is in debt.

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

The only problem is that it prevented these firearms from being smuggled into the United States from Canada. Oh yeah, and these are gun components from World War One era German firearms, smuggled into America in violation of a law there to protect the profits of gun manufacturers.

For a brief period before Buffalo took down Carolina yesterday, the Edmonton Oilers were in fact the mathematical favourites to win the Stanley Cup -- namely, Lowe and the boys were only 7 wins away from tasting the cup, while the other surviving teams needed 8 more wins. Buffalo now joins that grouping. Meanwhile Anaheim and Carolina are starting to fall behind. Not that such a statement really means anything. Just ask San Jose, who won their first two games against the Oilers. Or Montreal, who stole two from Carolina at home mind you before losing 4 straight. Detroit and Calgary both won their first game at home only to go on and lose the series. Winning Game 1 is nice, but winning Game 3 is critical.

If you doubt the seriousness of this statement, consider this: going into Game 3 a series has three possible permutations, one of which just the flip of the other: think of it like the triplet state where s=1 in quantum mechanics*. Your team can go into Game 3 up by 2 games. You can go into it down by 2 games. Finally, there are two ways that you can go into it tied 1-1. Now the latter case means that Game 3 loses much of its cruciality (is that a word?) [what the hell are you asking me for, what am I his editor or something? -ed] transfers over to Game 4. The first case, winning Game 3 means an absolute chokehold on the series. You may not sweep the series (as a desperate Senators fan might remind you), but you really aren't likely to lose it (as a desperate Yankees fan might remind you). The second case, winning Game 3 means suddenly you're alive and well. Obviously the desperate San Jose fans [all six of them? nah, too easy -ed]can tell you what it means to lose Game 3 after winning the previous two games.

So tonight at 7pm Mountain Time the Oilers again face off in Anaheim to see who is victorious. I have to count myself as one of the determined skeptics I'm afraid. I still don't think this series is going to go in the Oilers favour. I read somewhere online last week a prediction that whoever would win Game 1 of the Clarence Campbell Conference would go on to lose the series, and I don't think that's a particularly untrue statement to make even now. I wanted a lot more goals on Bryzgalov than just 2 (the score was 3-1 but with an empty netter that wasn't as "easy" as Colby Cosh claimed ("easy", "not in earnest", tomayto tomahto). He had a not-great game for the first time this playoffs, true, but he was still extremely solid and a far cry from losing his confidence. Taking apart his game early is the key -- it worked for us against San Jose.

But FACLC, I can hear you say, it took us the better part of four games to kill Toskala's confidence in that last series, and that was enough. Was it? Remember that after Game 5, where Toskala was absolutely brutal (6 goals in 18 shots) he bounced back to a near-all-star-performance in Game 6. Edmonton won that game only because the players playing in front of the net weren't confident of the man they had between the pipes. Had Game 6 not settled the series, I'm sure you'd have found the team playing Game 7 much more confident with a strong goaltending performance to build upon. Taking down Bryzgalov early in the series means that if and/or when he comes back from a couple of bad 5+ goal games (particularly at home) the Oilers already have too strong a lead in the series (and possibly have already won it). Imagine if Game 1 had the Game 3 playbook from last series. Open with a pair of 6-3 routs. In Game 3 of this round Bryzgalov comes back into form (roughly analogous to the game we watched Friday night) but still the Oilers get a couple past him and the Ducks falter. Suddenly it doesn't matter much about his performance in Game 4: even if he's back on his game, the Oilers only need 1 win in 4 games to clinch the series, and have some time to pick him full of holes waiting for Buffalo to hopefully take 7 games against Carolina.

The last point should be re-stated: the Oilers need a rest. Why they had to play on Friday when the two teams out East had already been waiting a week is borderline criminal, all for the sake of the CBC's damned ratings in Toronto-South. Beating Anaheim before the Eastern series is concluded (hopefully with a Carolina win!) is critical.

* The Wikipedia link doesn't really do much justice: scrolling to the green "triplet states" section on this link works a little better. The "quick executive summary" as one of my physics profs (who doesn't seem to be listed at the UofA Physics Department any longer) liked to say is that when the proton and electron each have spin, S(total)=S(proton)+S(electron). But the Sz operator when applied to the (chi1)x(chi2) particle state produces a result equal to hbar*(m1+m2)*chi1*chi2, and that is just the single chi equation with (m1+m2) taking the place of the constant m, so therefore m=m1+m2 for the compositie system. Now if you apply a "lowering operator" to the up-up state you can isolate an s=1 condition to find three states:|1 1> = up-up|1 0> = 1/(square root of 2)*(up-down + down-up)|1 -1> = down-downThis is precisely what I was after in my allusion above: three possible states for your team, but one is really a composite of two results (Oilers win first lose second, Ducks win first lose second).

2006-05-19

So the MLB.tv Indians/Pirates game is in HDTV. No use to me, but I do get to watch TV talking head Andy Baskin sitting in the darkened booth berating underlings to get the right thing on the telepromter for the NBA playoff highlights. The studio lights come on, he thanks them for getting their shit together, and starts his rant just in time for MLB.tv to switch video feeds over to the start of the third inning and C.C. Sabathia's 3rd strikeout in a row. The audio still covers him, but the ball game is back on. Classic.

Or at least it should be: interleague play starts today in Major League Baseball. I'm currently watching the start of Cleveland versus Pittsburgh.

As an ardent traditionalist I'll come right out and report that I'm agin' the idea of playing across the leagues, at least in the protracted form it currently appears. Two three-game series a year, maybe one three-gamer and one four-gamer against a "natural rival" (NYY/NYM, LAD/LAA, Cubs/ChiSox, Pirates/Phillies, Orioles/Nationals, Rangers/Astros, that sort of thing). I see this year that the "Battle of Canada" has officially ended: last year they still had Toronto vs. MontrealWashington, and this year have the exciting matchup of... Toronto Blue Jays versus the Colorado Rockies. (I guess Colorado is short a natural rival too, unless you consider perhaps the Seattle Mariners who currently are with San Diego -- San Fran isn't a half bad matchup for the Mariners, but Oakland already has the rights to that series covered). Florida/Tampa, Minnesota/WisconsinMilwaukee, Cincinatti/Detroit, Boston/Philly, Cards/Royals, and Braves/Arizona are the other games tonight.

Hmm, Sizemore just got a home run off of...Zach Duke's third pitch. Wow, good thing I held off one day on the trade I accepted this morning in one of my leagues, swapping Victor Martinez and C.C. Sabathia for Jorge Posada, Jermaine Dye, and Zach Duke. So if Sabathia can pitch a solid game while Duke falters, I can get one last quality start out of this.

Likewise in the top of the first, Victor Martinez just hit an RBI double, another quality performance that I still get a piece out of.

Yes, the Edmonton Oilers are now halfway to their 6th Stanley Cup (which would put us unopposed at 5th place on the all-time list of cup winners, after Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, and Ottawa, surpassing our current tie-for-fifth with Boston).

Just a friendly reminder about the last time a Duck met an Oiler:

Brief Aside: During the game, Kelly Hrudey took time away from commenting on how nervous Toskala looked for the first 30 seconds of gametime to point out Ryan Smyth's attempted play cut off by Toskala's positioning. "I don't know much mathematics, but what I do know is" Hrudey began. I almost broke the television. Gorammit man, I've told you twice now to stop doing that!

Side note somebody at work mentioned: Oilers home games make the team somewhere in the $1.25 million range, not counting spinoff revenues from deep playoff runs. By that measure, how much of Mike Peca's $4 million salary that was generally (and accurately) considered to be wasted money has Peca paid back by getting the game-winning-goal in Game 6?

So today I went downtown to witness the Edmonton Oilers fan parade. It was pretty enjoyable, which is to be expected. Before that got underway, however, 11am was a celebration at City Hall for Norwegian Constitution Day.

If you want photos from the fan event downtown, Colby Cosh took fancy pictures. I photographed the event as well, concentrating more on the crowd. Here's what I took:

2006-05-15

Yes, one Oiler win on Wednesday brings us to the halfway mark of the 2006 playoff drive. Go team!

Sunday's game was...crazy. Intense. A game we absolutely didn't deserve to win. Yet we did, and with a 6-3 score to. Which brings us to what would be an Afflec trivia question if this was baseball, and I knew shit about trivia: when was the last time the Oilers scored 6 goals or more in two consecutive playoff games? I mean geesh, Andy Moog was probably in net at the time.

Now onto more serious matters. First off, BlueMile.ca has added Game 4 pictures but has nothing so far from Game 5. Game 4 was the game I actually watched at Thirsty Turtle -- so called "BlueMile.ca Headquarters". None of the people in our party who "flashed" made the site... mostly due to their refusal to bare their breasts except to a BlueMile.ca guy in the storage room. That, my friends, is weak. I hate those girls. And they were in my party!

Apparently not: over at the Battle of Alberta, Colby Cosh brings up a point I had wondered myself after the major police presence on Whyte Avenue. (A topic which I've brought up already) To wit, with all those police out there on Whyte Ave pounding batons into riot shields and harassing people daring to stand on the street corner at 105th Street and 82nd Avenue, and with all the stabbings reported, how many of the alleged stabbers are in police custody? What's that? None of them? I don't understand. All of these police officers out there making sure no hot Whyte Avenue ass or gorgeous breasts make their way into the sight of excited fans, all the SWAT vans parked at every back alley on either side of the strip, and the police blockade at every chokepoint...you think maybe just one of those policemen could have, you know, helped catch the stabber. Or were they too busy dressed in their goofy outfits enjoying life as part of their own little gang that could scare little girls with big sticks and pepper spray?Sheriff Bourne: But our shipment got stole right off that train you was ridin' in. which is why you won't be seeing a parade in town today.Malcom Reynolds:Stolen? Didn't we see an entire regiment of fine young AllianceFederals on the train?- Firefly episode 102 - "The Train Job"

While on the subject, perhaps its time for EPS to learn about the Balloon Effect, whereby the police strategy of going right to the corner of 105th and Whyte and splitting the crowd into two distinct halves was possibly a bad idea...particularly since it turned a happy excited crowd into a very pissed off crowd spreading across the sidestreets of Whyte.

A friend of mine had his own take on the subject. Ever hear of Carnival in Brazil? How about Mardi Gras in New Orleans? Now, think long and hair about this: have you ever heard anybody complain that Edmonton isn't a cosmopolitan city, or that we're not a true international metropolis, or that Edmonton is too small-town or small-time, perhaps that Edmonton isn't very exciting, that there's very little of a nightlife, or that its a city of rubes or anything along those lines. Now, very carefully, ask yourself: wouldn't it help if the police didn't specifically try to stop people from going out partying and having a good time? Would perhaps we be a little more exciting of a city if people were allowed to go out and celebrate a once-in-a-decade event? Perhaps if the police, with the full cooperation of the city government, both major newspapers, and according to the SUN 68% of the population, weren't so dead set against people going out and enjoying themselves we might get, you know, some tourist dollars out of this?

Seriously... when in New Orleans once I explained to people that in Alberta the drinking age was 18, strippers got totally nude, and an 18 year old could sleep with a 17 year old lying about her age and not end up in jail, they responded with excitement over how massive a party town it could be...if only they took a more European attitude towards drinking at the bar (Whyte Ave as an outdoor-drinking zone sounds like a good start).Edmonton: City of Dumbasses

So do I think that Edmonton Police Services used excessive force during Game 4 of the Edmonton Oilers/San Jose Sharks game on Friday May 12 2006 on Whyte Avenue? Yes, and not just because I want to catch all those search strings on Blogger!

2006-05-14

Currently Oilers are up 2-1 in Game 5 down at the Shark Tank. I'd much rather a nice 3 goal lead going into the second period.

I've been unable to blog due to drinking for Game 4, and then last night, and then again for much of this afternoon. My liver is going to hate me. So is my wallet. (Side note: never go bowling! $90 for 5 frames!)

Game 4 was... awesome. Incredible. The after party was fairly good as well, even though the police caused more than a little bullshit. The Edmonton SUN covers it here, which I enjoyed because I'm mentioned in the article. No, you won't find any violation of anonymous status.

One man claimed in an e-mail he saw revellers struck by police officers armed with batons, and two others knocked over by an EPS sport utility vehicle travelling at walking speed.

By the end of the evening, fans who had been chanting "Go Oilers Go" were instead screaming "F--- the police!", he said.

Game 5 isn't going so well though. Edmonton is leading still going into the 3rd, but only by 1 goal, and thats just not enough in the Shark Tank. They need to stop getting penalties (even though the Sharks are so far unsuccessful, its only a matter of time, and the PK lines are getting exhausted), and need to create more quality chances in the San Jose zone...Toskala's SV% is pretty low in this game, and more good shots on him should produce results up on the board.

At least the Oil are doing better than my baseball pool team, down 1-11-0 with only today left to come back. Damn do I hate it when that happens.. I seem to have run out of starting pitchers.

Well, a hot topic these days is the price of gas. So when I'm asked "what's gas running at over there", I answer, as one might expect, 101.9. (You know, I'm sick of gas prices sounding like radio stations... 97.3, 100.3, 103.9...that should never be talking about the price of fuel).

Of course, to an American, 101.9 sounds like a temperature, not a pump price. What do to? Well, the easiest thing is just to consult the oracle of Google. That's right:

Small Dead Animals is reporting the interesting story about how Bob Rae apparently referred to the softwood lumber deal as the "Munich Agreement" [but in his defense he didn't refer to the word "pact", so that apparently means something! -ed] which meant somewhere in there Harper and Bush were Neville Chamberlain and Hitler. Not sure how that works, but fine. (I dealt with the softwood lumber pact in this space as well)

May 10, 2006 - I now have confirmation from more than a dozen people who were present at the LPC(O) leadership forum in Toronto last Friday: Bob Rae did, in fact, liken the softwood lumber agreement to the Hitler-Chamberlain Munich Pact. Which certainly suggests Rae analogizes Harper and Bush, jointly and severally, to Hitler and Chamberlain.I'd ask his campaign who Rae regards as Hitler, in that scenario, if they got back to me. Which they did not.This is so bloody depressing. And it's reason #3,451 why a lot of us aren't so involved with the Liberal Party of Canada anymore.

Er, excuse me? Warren Kinsella? Did you just say that offhand references to Nazis was a distasteful tactic performed by the Liberals? As the title to this blog indicates, I don't think that Warren actually reads his own books! Wasn't Kinsella a highist-ranking Liberal Party official at the time he basically decried that the entire right-wing movement in Canada was racist neo-Nazis on the basis of one or two anti-Semites who attended a rally once?

Kinsella is the last person who should be opening his mouth on the subject of Nazis.

2006-05-11

Wow, what a game. Ulcer city, one might say. The Oil hammered San Jose for the first period, and still went into intermission with only one goal to show for it. They (as usual) sat out of the 2nd period, and the Sharks nabbed a 2-1 lead. As the City of Edmonton braced for the pain of perhaps getting swept in a series with the identical 2-1 score in each game, it took Raffi Torres to tie it up 2-2 and give Vesa Toskala 2 goals-against in a game for only the third time in the playoffs, and the first since Game 4 against Nashville on April 28th. Raffi Torres? We gave him a stick? Who knew?

First overtime was fairly easy going, no heavy risks as the Oil tried to wind the Sharks down. When that didn't work, the 2nd/3rd OT was where we returned to first period style: hard hitting crash banging shoot 50,000 pucks as Toskala and hope one of them went in. Eventually, painfully, one did: Horcoff and Smyth double-teamed in the low slot and Horcoff batted in the winner.

Um, that's a scary game. Scary mainly because for 5/6 periods the Oilers outplayed San Jose, and outplayed them hard. Everything (including the kitchen sink and Ryan Smyth's teeth) went into that game, and we still barely won it. San Jose, while being dominated all game, still could hang on to almost beat us. If every game in this series went like Game 3, it would be Edmonton-Dallas circa 2001 all over again -- just with Edmonton in the role of the Stars. The whole game I had Dallas flashbacks, remembering their long and brutal assault against our hot north European goaltender which Tommy deftly held his own against, while we had only occasional forays into the opposing zone. Yet in those games more often than not the onslaught eventually got through, and I kept waiting for one of those Cheechoo breakaways to capitalize whilst we got nothing for our continual efforts. As it was, I was wrong...for now.

A few notes though:

Georges Laraque's boarding major was in all senses of the word a bullshit call. A boarding minor, perhaps. But when 76 inches and 245 pounds of Laraque check 72 inches and 185 pounds of Cheechoo, don't be surprised when the latter's head lines up fairly close to the former's shoulders. How many major penalties have been called in the entire NHL all year? How many of those were for boarding? Sure no goals resulted (partially due to the Sharks getting assessed a minor during the 5 minutes), but its a totally unfair call. On the bright side, it got Laraque out of the game and out of Mac-T's temptation file.

Cheechoo is scary. Screw Thornton, who stunk it up when he had a yellow "B" on the front of his sweater a mere 6 months ago, this is the guy you've gotta watch for. Fortunately, watch for him Roloson did. The playoff scoring leader got robbed a couple of times, which was extremely good news for the Oilers.

My protests from Game 2 have been answered. Hemsky shot the puck more. Spacek shot the puck less. Now its time for me to come up with a new request list for the team, and I hope that MacTavish can handle it (and/or be aware of it, even subconsciously): stop passing back to the blue line whenever we get into trouble in the corners! I think we've all figured out now that Toskala is some sort of robot super-goalie when you're shooting the puck at him from the blue line. It's just not gonna work, Game 1's first goal notwithstanding...er...or Game 3's first goal notwithstanding. See that play we ended the game with? Use it. Keep the traffic high in front of the net. Get players moving laterally in the slot, especially close in. Park Ryan Smyth behind the net, or in front of the net, or any of the trouble-making places near the net he's paid so much money for. Get shots going from up close. Try wraparounds from behind the net. Squeeze plays in the high slot, or in the lower circle. Scramble. Create chaos. Score goals. Too many times I saw Moreau or Horcoff or Pisani get into trouble in the corner, and then pass it back to Pronger or Bergeron or Smith to set up a fresh play. Problem is, those quick San Jose skaters can get into position as quickly as we can, and Toskala doesn't give up rebounds -- see my next point. Don't set up a new play, adapt the play as you go and get out of that corner and into the crease.

I'm only going to say this once, San Jose is not Detroit. It's time the Oilers adapted to San Jose's goalie and San Jose's game -- and its not the same as our game. Try that trap for a while, just to confound them.

The Whyte Ave honk parade was starting within 5 minutes of the game's conclusion, even though it was 12:37am when it all wound up. This city has some crazy fans.

Our big ticket buying plan fell through, and will spend Friday on Whyte Ave instead. Since there are 3 birthdays to celebrate this weekend, this is probably a good thing.

I've already told Kelly Hrudey to stop trying to talk physics, but today both he and Ron MacLean have to learn to stop talking about biology as if they're some sort of science professors. Particularly when each of them are bringing up totally opposite arguments, and then (this is the kicker) acknowledging and agreeing with the other argument and then restating their own. How can they both do that in a single segment? It really boggled the mind.

Still no new content on BlueMile.ca. You know, FlamesGirls.com never waited this long for new pictures. That's a shame, really. Of course, Calgary didn't find itself 2-0 for a lot of their home games. Speaking of which, FlamesGirls.com redirects to a p0rn site now, though the old page is still up at this link. All you Calgary girls who were showing off your assets in 2004 must be proud to know that you're now on a full honest-to-God porno site. Instead of showing support to your team with a local guy's little site that could, you're now supporting some anonymous porn king in Washington State...isn't that special?

Well, he threw his helmet at an umpire. Now in many ways this incident wasn't nearly as serious. You can view the bat-throwing incident on YouTube. No such free video seems available yet on the Williams helmet toss, but Bernie merely tossed his helmet backwards in disgust. It didn't quite hit plate umpire Charlie Relaford, and didn't seem like it was particularly intended to. Likewise, it seems likely there'll be further penalties issued.

2006-05-04

Today I had a sorta long talk about a mutual friend regarding the "infamous M_______" as I've put it. Turns out that she stopped talking to me for 18 months [and counting.... -ed] because I made an unwanted pass at her...you know, after she invited me over, danced with me in a see-through nightgown, and wrestled with me on her roommates bed.

Oh, that's a relief. For a while I was worried it was going to be over something unreasonable.

Also went through an ex's blog today, and discovered the entry from our breakup... two lines long with an "optimistic" tag. Well, so long as they're all being crazy. Two down, who's going to be the third surprise du jour?

Rotowire.com, such a useful source of player insight when it comes to baseball, really went bonkers over hockey today, concerning Anaheim goalie Ilya Bryzgalov. Reporting on the Game 7 win over Cowtown, Rotowire "advised":

Jean-Sebastien Giguere's health is no longer of concern. Bryzgalov wrapped up the series playing roughly 4.5 games and posting an astounding 0.80 goals-against average and .968 save percentage.

Er, lets not be too hasty here about "astounding 0.80 GAAs". Even when Calgary had a sixth attacker they couldn't produce a single quality scoring chance. The Flames had the lowest GFA in the goram* league this season, so their 1 goal over the final two playoff games wasn't entirely unexpected. Put me in that goalie slot and watch me let in no more than 3. Let's see how Bryzgalov does against the Colorado Avalanche before we crow about his acheivements: shut down the Sakic/Tanguay/Hejduk line, and the Turgeon/Laaksonen/Hinote line, and the McLean/Laperriere/Brunette line, and then point shots of Rob Blake and Patrice Brisbois and Karlis Skrastins. Then we can decide what kind of goaltender Anaheim has gotten itself.

April 25, 2006: The Seattle Times reports that Eddie Guardado is "in no danger of losing his closer job".May 4, 2006: The Seattle Post-Intelligence reports...that Eddie Guardado "is no longer the Mariners primary closer".

Ouch. Sorry Eddie. I guess blowing yet another save on May 3rd was the final nail. What was that? 3 saves blown in 8 days back in April? A 8.38 ERA? Ugh.

The problem is there's really nobody around to replace him: Rafael Soriano or J.J. Putz or George Sherrill don't quite jump out at you.

Oddly enough I tried to secure Guardado, and came up 0/4 in my leagues. Shit, eh?

4-0 White Sox in Chicago this morning as Jose Conteras tries for thirteen consecutive wins. This will help my epic struggle discussed here.

The quick summary is that "Chang" temporarily fell out of first place (a rank he ended up finishing at) into a mere tie for first, and instantly declared he no longer wanted to play in the league, and backed out of his monetary commitments.

So anyways, in our baseball pool the two of us are currently head to head.

I don't expect this situation to hold: the batting totals in particular are all really close: 2 runs and 2 homers and 2 ribbies and a stolen base aren't particularly hard to acheive, and my shitty OPS is only countered by his even shittier OPS. I expect in that category at least that I will lose out on very soon: Scott Posednik and Ichiro versus Bobby Abreu and Andruw Jones isn't something I expect to stay steady. But my starting pitching I'd take against his any day: and besides, none of his starters are scheduled to be up again this week except for Javier Vasquez, who I really doubt is going to duplicate his six innings without a single earned run and seven strikeouts feat of Monday.

And I will be endeavoring to buy tickets to either Game 3 or Game 4 next weekend. A buddy is coming down from les prairies tres grande, and that seems like a good excuse to go.

There are only 6-8 of us who would be going. Ticketmaster maxes you out at 4 seats. So logically, I suggested having three of us try for tickets: if one of us gets in, a small select group will get to go. If two of us get in, we all get to go.

He objected on the concern that all three of us would get through. What, he asked, would we do with the extra tickets?

Yes, it seriously never occured to him that there are 700,000 people interested in watching that game. In the unlikely event that all 3 of us are successful (I mean really, if one of us is successful it'll be amazing) I'm sure 4 Oilers playoff tickets won't be hard to hawk.

Update, 3:34am: I totally forgot the best moment of the night: when the CBC cut to show Calgary fans sprinkled across the Red Mile watching TVs in storefronts totally in shock over what they were seeing, as it was 2-0 with less than 3 minutes left in regulation.

Its a huge development, really. There were several Canadian concessions and a couple smaller American concessions. There's been a lot of ink spilled, and from people who know or care about this a lot more than myself.

The biggest part of this has to be though that the Liberals couldn't do the deal. The Conservatives could, merely through a pleasant relationship with a president in his second term low on political capital. That sends a message that most people won't understand and even fewer will actually appreciate.

Back on April 24th, Martin Gerber let in 3 goals on 13 shots in the first period of Game 2 in the Carolina-Montreal series. He had let in 6 goals in 23 shots on the previous game, and so former Red Deer Rebel Cam Ward took to the netminding position. Ward didn't stand on his head, but played solid and gave the team a boost as Carolina came back to score 4 uninterrupted goals. Les Habitants peppered Ward with shots after that, scoring the tying goal on a triple rebound. A second goal past Ward was to come, and then a third, but by that time it was the second overtime.

As the game ended, I turned to the people from work that were watching the game and declared:

We've just seen Montreal win its last game.

And I was right (go figure). Last night Cory Stillman slipped a garbage goal past Cristobel Huet in the second overtime of Game 6, causing Carolina to win their 4th consecutive game and win the series 4-2.

The difference? Exactly what I said when I had to defend my statement in blue above: Cam Ward. The Sherwood Park native, who had a 0.882 save percentage in 28 games over the regular season with a 3.68 GAA, turned on the energy in the playoffs. Excepting the game he came in halfway through (where he still had 2.67GAA and 0.870SV%), Cam Ward in the playoffs has had a 0.955 save percentage and a 1.23 goals against average, and a 4-0 record. Compare this with 2004 playoff hero Miikka Kiprusoff: the Flames superstar 'tender had a 1.85GAA with a 0.928SV%, which is an incredible stat over a playoff run. Ward still has a long way to go, but the hard hitting Albertan may surprise a lot of people.

So how about other 2005/2006 goalies? How does Ward rate in the "new NHL"?

Update, May 4 2006, 1:33pm: I almost forgot my favourite Cam Ward bit: you can't go against an Alberta native, or a Red Deer Rebel. But more imporantly, never bet against a guy who's name sounds like an engine part.

Hey, what's wrong with your car? Oh, the Cam Ward is shot, I need a new one. Oh, there's a little rattling in the Cam Ward. I can't find a new Cam Ward for this Charger if my life depended on it.

And Michelle Jean is due to visit Edmonton for the first time in her life. People got arrested on Whyte Avenue, and hardcore arrested on the Red Mile. Oil is really expensive. Gas is even more expensive.

And what's the only thing to motivate me to blog this week? Greg de Vries.

I feel I should have my own dictionary entry:

lethargy leth·ar·gyn. pl. leth·ar·gies

1. A state of sluggishness, inactivity, and apathy.2. A state of unconsciousness resembling deep sleep.3. Feynman and Coulter's Love Child

(I feel this joke works better with no anonymous blogging thing going on)

Reading the CBC.ca report of Calgary's game against Anaheim tonight, and it discussed how Yelle is the expert at Game 7:

Yelle has faced Game 7 scenarios 10 times in the post-season, tying him with Greg de Vries for the most among active players, and is one of the character players Calgary counts on in critical situations.

Er, can you say that again? Did the CBC just mistake Greg de Vries as an active player? The dude has 40 goals in almost 650 games! The two game-winning-goals he scored this season amounts to a whopping 28.5% of his career total. de Vries is many things (less of an asshole than some of his relatives out west, for example), but calling him "active" really stretches the boundaries of the English language.

2006-05-02

That was a game that Edmonton had no right, I repeat, no right to win. Outshot, outplayed, outscored, outhustled, outworked, outskilled...for two periods Detroit took to Edmonton like a rag doll. While again Roloson didn't stand on his head or do any of the Joseph/Salo heroics we've seen in years past, he was solid: only one of the two goals Detroit scored was essentially "stoppable". Solid was a requirement though: for 40 minutes, Roloson had to face 27 shots on goal whilst Legace only faced 17. He kept them in the game for the heroics though: Pisani scores 2 in under 4 minutes to tie the game. Detroit gets ahead again, when Hemsky scores 2 in under 3 minutes to put the Oilers in the lead. In fact, Edmonton played with a tie for 21:56, was behind for 36:58, and only spent 1:06 -- one minute and six seconds -- in the lead.. and that was the last minute of the game.

And so with that, Edmonton moves onto Round 2 for the first time since McGuire and Sosa were battling for a home run record. And was there a FlamesGirls.com style party on Whyte Ave afterwards?

You sort of can't have it both ways. If it was bad for the United States to invade Iraq despite having done nothing directly to the U.S., it must also be bad for the United States to get involved in Sudan.

But wait, you say: the U.S. doesn't have to invade Sudan, just get involved.

No, they pretty much have to invade. The Sudanese don't want to help the poor innocent people in Darfur getting slaughtered. They tacitly approve of what's going on, and therefore any meaningful progress can only come from a new government in Khartoum. Three guesses how we can do that.